Moyar Mark. A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
100 e Huk Rebellion
ment’s harsh and unjust handling of the populace, and that this poor conduct
stemmed from poor leadership.
Aer obtaining Magsaysay’s concurrence in this assessment, Lansdale
helped him nd ways to x the leadership. e solutions they formulated were
not complicated but required vigor, perseverance, and moral rectitude, quali-
ties with which Magsaysay, unlike his predecessors, was overowing. Clad in
an aloha shirt and slacks to conceal his identity, Magsaysay went to barracks
and military installations without prior warning to check on his ocers. On
more than a few occasions, Magsaysay caught ocers loang or sleeping at
their posts. Aer conversing with ocers and enlisted personnel, he wandered
over to the charcoal res where civilians were cooking to consult them, oen
walking unaccompanied through dangerous areas and impressing all around
him with his courage. Making maximum use of the free hand that Quirino had
given him, Magsaysay red or demoted ocers wherever he found evidence
of incompetence, inertia, corruption, or maltreatment of the citizenry. He also
gave promotions on the spot to ocers who had performed exceptionally well.
Magsaysay made these inspection visits with astonishing frequency, but he
also sent out trusted individuals to carry out surprise inspections at all hours.
Once word had spread about the unannounced visits, many ocers who had
been lackadaisical perked up and began taking their jobs seriously. ose who
did not became the next to feel the axe.26
During his rst month as secretary of national defense, Magsaysay re-
lieved thirteen high-ranking Philippine ocers, including the chief of sta
of the armed forces. Quirino, who was a good friend of many top ocers,
objected to these rings but acquiesced aer Magsaysay said he would quit if
Quirino revoked his authority to replace personnel. Ocers who were rela-
tives or chums of Magsaysay did not escape, either. When a committee of gen-
erals complained that all the changes were demoralizing the army, Magsaysay
replied, “I don’t care. If they are bad I will demoralize them some more.” In
the place of ousted ocers, Magsaysay put men whom he and his American
advisers knew to be dedicated and active. He replaced battalion commanders
with young ocers, ranging in age from twenty-ve to thirty-two, who had a
history of good performance. In addition, Magsaysay was able to make whole-
sale changes to the leadership of the ill-disciplined constabulary by convincing
Quirino to transfer the constabulary from the Department of the Interior to
the Department of National Defense. As a rule, Magsaysay avoided assigning
ocers to their native provinces so that they could not use their powers to act
e Huk Rebellion 101
upon old grudges, and he broke up factions within the ocer corps by shuf-
ing ocers around periodically.27
To his ocers, Magsaysay emphasized winning the people over through
good conduct. He insisted that ocers promptly report the and atrocities by
Philippine troops and made sure that the perpetrators were duly punished.
As a safeguard against ocers who refused to report adequately, Magsaysay
invited citizens to send him complaints of wrongdoing by government per-
sonnel. He had each complaint investigated, and disciplined the accused when
they were found guilty.28
Because of his charisma and his manifest dedication, Magsaysay was an
outstanding motivator. Napoleon Valeriano, a Philippine military ocer, and
Charles Bohannon, an American adviser, asserted that Magsaysay had an
“outstanding ability to inspire eective action by small units, to rally to his
support leaders at all echelons.” ey noted that Magsaysay’s subordinates
strove to emulate his persona, which they described thus: “new, dramatic, in-
nitely energetic, determined to overcome, by any means necessary, the ob-
stacles to eective action against the Huk.”29 Magsaysay also inspired his o-
cers to higher levels of integrity by living simply and displaying modesty in
public appearances. Oen he drove his own car rather than use a chaueur.
Government ocials and ocers became less disposed to corrupt behavior
and to exhibitions of wealth that would raise suspicions of corruption.30
So magnetic was Magsaysay’s personality that even some Huks turned
into government supporters. Aer Magsaysay publicly oered to speak with
any Filipino who wanted to help ght the insurgents, the Huks sent a young
ocer posing as an ordinary civilian to accept the oer and assassinate Mag-
saysay. When the young man showed up at his meeting with Magsaysay, he
was ready to kill, but rst he let Magsaysay speak. e would-be assassin was
so impressed that he decided to switch to Magsaysay’s side. In a stroke of re-
markable good fortune for the government, the convert told Magsaysay that
the top Huk leadership could be located by following a twelve-year-old girl in
Manila who passed messages while selling meats and vegetables from a bas-
ket. Putting the girl under surveillance, Magsaysay speedily apprehended 150
Communist Party members, including the top twelve members of the polit-
buro, along with the complete records of the Communist Party. For the Huks,
it was a devastating blow, though not a fatal one.31
Magsaysay’s new leaders in the military and the constabulary transformed
central Luzon with the swiness and totality of a tsunami. In stark contrast
102 e Huk Rebellion
to their predecessors, battalion commanders regularly conducted patrols far
from bases and roads, going deep into the jungles and swamps to look for
Huks and collect information. ey kept their men in the eld for several days
at a stretch, rather than bringing them in every night. Curtailing the use of
large sweep operations, which the enemy easily evaded, they concentrated on
aggressive small-unit patrolling, which not only made them less visible but
also let them cover more ground and aorded more opportunities for inter-
action with the population. e army did retain large mobile reserve units that
sped by motorized transport to the sites of big Huk attacks and, on occasion,
mounted large assaults on enemy bases and supplies.32
Fundamental to the success of all these operations, as recounted in a book
produced by the faculty of the Philippine Infantry School, were “the initia-
tive, improvisation, and aggressiveness of the commander.”33 In the hunt for
information about the Huks, some commanders outdid others because they
exercised greater initiative in collecting intelligence above and beyond what
the intelligence organizations were already gathering, and sought information
to corroborate that from single sources. e same commanders were usually
the most aggressive and relentless in their military operations. e centrality
of this type of leadership in bringing down the Huks is reected in accounts
from the other side. In November 1950, William Pomeroy described the new
situation that he and the Huks faced: “Reports come in from all along the
Sierra Madre. e enemy is becoming more aggressive. Spies are everywhere
in the towns, and patrols are oen in the forest now, where once they never
came. Our [Field Commands] ambush them, shoot up their vehicles on the
roads, make death traps of mountain paths, but the patrols do not stop.”34 Im-
provisation was crucial because the counterinsurgency methods taught at the
Infantry School and the Ground Combat School, which were largely derived
from standard American counterinsurgency doctrines, oen did not work in
certain locales or worked only when adjusted to local conditions.35
e Infantry School study identied commanders, especially battalion
commanders, as the sole determinants of troop morale and discipline. Eec-
tive battalion commanders routinely visited the men and looked into the
problems that adversely aected their performance and welfare, xing those
problems whenever possible. ey supervised small unit operations and made
eective use of their sta. When such a battalion commander was replaced
with an ocer who did not lead properly, the morale and discipline of the
battalion sank precipitously.36 Because of the prevalence of good command-
ers and hence good discipline aer Magsaysay took over, Philippine troops
e Huk Rebellion 103
committed far fewer crimes against the population than before, which led to
greatly increased cooperation from the civilians. e new commanders also
reined in the landlords’ unruly civilian guards, the other leading source of
peasant discontent.37
e improvements in the counterinsurgency eort were facilitated by huge
increases in U.S. aid to the Philippines during Magsaysay’s term as secretary
of national defense, the result of heightened American fears of Communist
expansionism in Asia following Mao Zedong’s victory in China and North
Korea’s invasion of South Korea. e aid, however, was secondary in impor-
tance to leadership—corrupt and inept Philippine leadership would have
found ways to fritter away the aid, no matter how plentiful. Magsaysay used
some of the aid to raise the pay of Philippine soldiers, which enabled them
to live decently without robbing the populace. Other funds were dedicated to
ensuring that troops always had food, whether by transporting it to them by
vehicle or allowing them to buy food locally, so that hunger did not drive them
to take chickens or rice from peasant families.38
With American aid and Lansdale’s advice, Magsaysay established pro-
grams and enacted reforms in such areas as agricultural credit, health, roads,
and irrigation. ough modest in scale, these initiatives did much to bolster
Magsaysay’s image and the government’s image because they were well publi-
cized. Lansdale, tapping his expertise as a former advertising executive, helped
the government sell itself in print and on the airwaves, and Magsaysay held
numerous press conferences in which he persuasively articulated and justied
his policies.39
Magsaysay received the greatest propaganda value from a program that was
more ambitious in nature but similarly small in size. Dubbed the Economic
Development Corps (EDCOR), the program gave former insurgents title to
lands on Mindanao, chosen from tracts that had been publicly owned so as not
to alarm the landowning elites. In February 1951, EDCOR began clearing the
land, building roads, and establishing basic public services, and three months
later the rst settlers arrived. Each family received a plot of roughly een
acres of farmland and was issued tools and farm animals on credit. Philippine
troops helped the settlers build homes of nipa palm or wood and illuminated
them with electrical power, a luxury that most peasants had never before ex-
perienced. e communities had new hospitals, libraries, schools, and recre-
ational facilities. A second site was established on Mindanao late in 1951, and
two more in Luzon in 1954, in areas unmolested by guerrillas. All told, the
program resettled only 1,200 families, many of whom contained no former
104 e Huk Rebellion
Huks, having been selected because the government wanted enough staunchly
anti-Communist families on the land to guard against subversion. Nor did it
aect tenancy in the areas of high insurgent activity. Yet the program seriously
undermined support for the rebellion and caused Huks to defect because gov-
ernment propagandists bombarded the populace with detailed reports on the
program.40
Huk sources testied that the tide of the war turned against them between
late 1951 and the rst half of 1952. Aggressive and cunning government combat
operations, they observed, inicted fearsome casualties and destroyed bases.
Government forces lay in ambush around towns and lived among the people,
forcing the insurgents to hide in mountains or swamps or forests, where they
could not obtain information or recruits or food—even the lush tropical for-
ests contained almost no edible foliage. When the government forces went into
the mountains and swamps and forests to track the guerrillas down, the Huks
had to change locations constantly, depriving them of the time to recuperate
and reorganize that almost every successful insurgency has had. Numerous
Huks defected or surrendered because counterinsurgent military operations
forced them into an existence devoid of food and rest and convinced them that
the revolution was failing.41
Within the villages, the government’s military successes eroded support for
the Huk cause.42 e other critical development that helped divest the Huks of
popular support was the improved behavior of government personnel and the
landlords’ private security forces. Having never been converted to the radical
ideology of the Communist Party, most Huks and Huk supporters were ready
to abandon the cause once their original grievance—abuses of power by gov-
ernment personnel and the landlords—had been removed. “When Magsaysay
started making reforms in the Philippine army and in the government gener-
ally,” Jesus Lava recounted, “it had an impact not only on the movement’s mass
support but on the armed [Huk] soldiers as well. Many le because repression
was ending, and they were not ideologically committed enough to stay in the
movement, especially as things grew worse for the Huks.”43 Another former in-
surgent commented, “Once the landlords and government showed they would
stop abusing us, we were ready to put aside our guns.”44 e loss of peasant
support compelled the Huks to rely on intimidation and violence to get food
and supplies from the peasants, which alienated the peasants further.
By the fall of 1952 the Huks had been reduced to an estimated 4,000 men,
most of them on the run with few supplies and little contact with the popula-
tion. At this juncture, Luis Taruc and his brother Peregrino called for a peace-
e Huk Rebellion 105
ful settlement of the war, which prompted the Philippine Communist Party
leadership to suspend Luis and expel Peregrino. e party’s leadership made
another change of course a short time later, replacing plans to overthrow the
government quickly with plans to conduct a protracted struggle using pre-
dominantly nonviolent and legal political means.45
Despite the remarkable reversal of momentum, Magsaysay was not con-
tent with the pace of progress against the Huks. Large elements of the Quirino
administration, he believed, remained corrupt and indierent to the problems
confronting the common people, especially the need for land. In February 1953
his frustrations boiled over, and he resigned as secretary of national defense.
Magsaysay spent the next nine months running for president, with Lansdale
performing most of the functions of a campaign manager. e U.S. govern-
ment provided Lansdale with a secret $1 million bank account to use for Mag-
saysay’s campaign, although Lansdale claimed to have spent only $60,000 of
it. Lansdale drummed up $250,000 in campaign contributions from American
businesses that wanted good relations between the United States and the Phil-
ippines, including Coca-Cola, in violation of Philippine campaign-nancing
laws, and also obtained large sums from Philippine sugar producers. Ever the
charmer, Lansdale persuaded American and Philippine journalists to write
favorable proles of Magsaysay and to pillory Quirino for his corruption and
election tampering. In response to Lansdale’s persuasive entreaties, National-
ist Party leaders José Laurel and Claro Recto agreed to back Magsaysay. e
National Movement for Free Elections, a citizens’ organization funded secretly
by the United States, helped get people to turn out for the election, and it
monitored election sites to prevent fraud.
On election day, Magsaysay defeated Quirino by a tally of 2.9 million to
1.3 million votes. In central Luzon, the home of the Huks, he won a stunning
70 percent of the vote. American help must have gained Magsaysay a con-
siderable number of votes from people who had not previously appreciated his
many virtues, but the margin of victory suggests that it did not win him the
election. He had already impressed the press and the Philippine people with
his charismatic personality, his dexterous mind, and his success in reforming
the government, with help from Lansdale’s masterful propaganda.46
During the ensuing weeks, Magsaysay displayed his customary diligence
in selecting cabinet ministers and other high ocials. He appointed most of
them in an acting role, saying that their jobs would become permanent only
aer they had proven their worthiness. When relatives, friends, and campaign
supporters lined up at his oce to beseech him for jobs, he refused to give
106 e Huk Rebellion
them preferential treatment. “My personal feelings and those of my friends
are subordinate to the interests of the nation,” he explained. “And the interests
of the nation dictate that I be drastic. Otherwise, the lesson will be lost. e
welfare of the Philippines is bigger than any one man.”47
President Magsaysay opted to serve as his own secretary of national de-
fense. He continued to travel around the country checking on ocers and o-
cials and talking with peasants. Aside from the Department of National De-
fense, the government’s departments had heretofore contributed little to the
war against the Huks because previous presidents had not pressed them, but
with Magsaysay it was dierent. Brooking no resistance or sloth, Magsaysay
quickly had these departments bringing to bear valuable capabilities in edu-
cation, health, and other areas. To discourage corruption, Magsaysay ordered
that all public ocials publish their assets. He instructed the department heads
to be accommodating to journalists and did everything else possible to woo
the press, including raising money for the National Press Club building in
downtown Manila and giving government jobs to journalists, their families,
and their friends.48
As president, Magsaysay organized public works projects to improve the
government’s image and provide jobs. He tried to initiate large-scale social
welfare programs and sweeping land reform, but the Philippine congress,
which was dominated by the landlord class, blocked most of these initiatives.
e problems of landlessness and poverty persisted for the remainder of Presi-
dent Magsaysay’s time in oce.49 Yet the lack of major social and economic
changes did not thwart the counterinsurgency eort, because the population
still cared less about such issues than about security, good government, and
charismatic leadership. During Magsaysay’s rst year as president, the remain-
ing popular support for the Huks dissipated, and adroit governmental military
operations battered the remnants of the guerrilla units, turning the Huks into
a mere nuisance, consisting of widely scattered groups of no more than three
to ve men.50
e defeat of the Huk Rebellion illustrates splendidly how a single leader-
ship change at the top can alter the entire complexion of a counterinsurgency.
Ramon Magsaysay, with some help from Edward Lansdale, engineered the
government’s meteoric transition from failure to success, primarily by replac-
ing poor eld commanders and nding good ocers to take their places. Be-
cause he had demanded and received a free hand to make personnel changes
when he became secretary of national defense, he was able to sweep away even
the president’s cronies, something that few cabinet ministers have accom-
e Huk Rebellion 107
plished in any government. In picking replacements, Magsaysay renounced
the common practice of giving jobs to family members, friends, and political
supporters, which was personally painful for him but profoundly benecial for
the nation.
Magsaysay roused his ocers to new heights of performance through
natural charisma and exemplary conduct. Consciously or not, his ocers fol-
lowed his example of constant activity and perseverance in the face of adver-
sity. In an atmosphere where corruption was rampant, Magsaysay’s austerity
inspired ocers to keep their hands out of the public treasury. Magsaysay
demonstrated every other key counterinsurgency attribute to his subordinates,
and Lansdale was able to stay in the background to such a degree that no one
realized his talents had augmented Magsaysay’s, especially in the area of cre-
ativity.
In explaining Magsaysay’s successes, external observers have oen focused
exclusively on improved governance or social and economic reforms. Good
governance, the product of good leadership, was indeed crucial; social and
economic reforms could not have been, because they were very small in eect.
Well-led intelligence and military operations were also essential to overall suc-
cess, and indeed to good governance. Without them, the Huks would have
been able to kill government ocials in the towns and barrios, and much of
the populace would have stuck with the Huks in the belief that they would
prevail in the end.
No case illustrates better than the Huk rebellion how a foreign power can
stimulate improvement of an ally’s counterinsurgency capabilities without ad-
verse repercussions. In the elevation of Magsaysay, the rst key step for the
United States was identifying Magsaysay as a man of exceptional leadership
faculties. Most members of the Philippine elites could not have turned the
war around, no matter how much assistance the United States heaped upon
them. Next, the Truman administration coaxed Philippine president Quirino,
with words and the dangling of dollars, to appoint Magsaysay secretary of na-
tional defense. By sending the enormously skillful and personable Lansdale
to the Philippines, the Americans boosted Magsaysay’s eectiveness and en-
sured that he acted in accordance with American interests. Finally, the United
States covertly provided money and other resources to get Magsaysay elected
to the presidency. In the early twenty-rst century, as the leaders of Iraq and
Afghanistan are struggling to combat insurgencies, the United States should
seriously consider using such techniques to promote talent within the govern-
ments of those allies.
Kuala Lumpur
S
t
r
a
i
t
o
f
M
a
l
a
c
c
a
P
e
r
a
k
R
.
Penang
Is.
South
China
Sea
THAILAND
MALAYA
SUMATRA
SINGAPORE
Kuala Pilah
Seremban
Kuala Pilah
Port Dickson
Tampin
Malacca
Taiping
Betong
Butterworth
Ipoh
Kota Tinggi
Changi
KELANTAN
TRENGGANU
PERAK
JOHORE
SELANGOR
PAHANG
KEDAH
PERLIS
NEGRI
SEMBILAN
MALAYA, 1948
0
50
100 kilometers
0
50
100 miles
109
T
he Malayan Communist Party, like its counterpart in the Philippines,
traces its origins to the Comintern’s missionary expeditions of the
1920s. Communist agents from China began the hunt for supporters
in Singapore, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, in 1924, but with only mod-
est success. e Malayan Communist Party was not formally organized until
1930, at which time the Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, a French
Communist leader, and some Chinese Communists presided over its ocial
founding and placed it under the direction of the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bu-
reau in Shanghai. Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 created a groundswell
of anti-Japanese and pro-Chinese sentiment among Malayans of Chinese eth-
nicity, prompting large numbers to ock to the party. Over the next decade,
British police chased the party’s members and, with the help of spies within
the organization, made numerous arrests, but the party was still able to orga-
nize labor strikes and recruit new members.1
Malaya’s turn for a Japanese invasion came at the same time as the Phil-
ippines’, in December 1941. e British and the Malayan Communists put
aside their dierences to ght the hated Japanese, and, as the fall of Malaya
approached, the British even trained and equipped 200 Communist guerril-
las and sent them into the jungle as members of the new Malayan People’s
Anti-Japanese Army. British ocers who escaped the Japanese conquest ed
to the jungle to serve as military advisers to the guerrillas and assist with com-
munications and logistics. For the next few years, the Communist guerrillas
conducted harassing and scout actions against the Japanese, but they refused
CHAPTER 6
e Malayan Emergency